13 ms·

Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013)

129 points by forloop 11y ago

jjtheblunt 11y ago
People are hired by merits defined by the hiring manager, not a globally consistent set of merits. It's a very well written article.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  Yes, and those merits may or may not correlate with ability to do the job the candidate is being hired for.
iamthepieman 11y ago
I don't understand the author's problem with "look good on paper" This is paper that the applicant has full control over. The applicant can put whatever they want on their resume and cover letter. Sure this is a writing challenge that doesn't correlate directly with engineering ability but being able to communicate the value of your ideas and explain technical ideas and methods to people with different backgrounds and skill levels seems like something that's just as necessary as engineering ability. It's always been my mantra that if you can't explain something to someone with no background in it then you don't truly understand what you're trying to explain.
- leeny 11y ago
  Author here. The issue is that, much of the time, people reading the paper just look at proxies (for speed reasons and because they're disincentivized to select wild cards). You can do a fantastic job of explaining your projects, but if you don't have pedigree, the reader's eyeballs may never go far enough down the page. It's a matter of how these things are weighed, and the weight assigned to credentialing >>> the weight assigned to everything else.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    > but if you don't have pedigree, the reader's eyeballs may never go far enough down the page Solution: put your pedigree at the bottom of the page. Someone looking at my CV needs to get through all my projects and past successes before they get to the bullet point that says "5 years college, no degree". Why on earth would you put your weaknesses first?
    - leeny 11y ago
      Recruiters are good at quickly scanning for pedigree before incurring the cognitive load required to grok projects. So, I don't think placement/layout matters that much. And pedigree doesn't just refer to your degree -- it's also the brand name factor of where you've worked. Not saying this is OK, for the record.
  - iamthepieman 11y ago
    I don't even have a degree. I've always made it to the interview stage by putting myself on the cover letter and, to a lesser extent, in the resume. I might say what I would like to do for the company, mention some changes or improvements I would make to their products or tell them why I think they could use a geospatial engineer even if they don't use GIS in an obvious way in their publicly facing APIs/products. This is just as much a filter for me as it is for the company. One thing I've learned in my job searches is that I'm looking to filter just as much and quickly as the companies I'm applying to.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > I don't understand the author's problem with "look good on paper" This is paper that the applicant has full control over. The applicant can put whatever they want on their resume and cover letter. Yes, up to and including blatant lies. If your company establishes a reputation of screening resumes based on certain features like university you encourage less moral applicants to fluff up their resumes. While these people may not make it through the interview stages, they force the competent but humble or disadvantaged applicants out at the resume screening stage. > It's always been my mantra that if you can't explain something to someone with no background in it then you don't truly understand what you're trying to explain. True, but in some cases people aren't allowed to talk about what they have done at that level. That puts anyone from a defense contractor, HFT firm, R&D group, and similar at a significant disadvantage because they can only advertise what they are doing in the broadest terms, if at all.
  - iamthepieman 11y ago
    > Yes, up to and including blatant lies I wasn't suggesting that people lie on their resume or cover letter. > That puts anyone from a defense contractor, HFT firm, R&D group, and similar at a significant disadvantage. I was a defense contractor and experienced this first hand. I found that good communication skills both verbal and written were able to overcome this. Since the hypothetical non-technical recruiter in the OP isn't going to understand the technical things that you can't talk about anyways, being able to communicate how you added value is even more important.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      > I wasn't suggesting that people lie on their resume or cover letter. I know, and I did not intend to suggest that. I'm just pointing out that people do, and it distorts resume pre-screening. > I was a defense contractor and experienced this first hand. I found that good communication skills both verbal and written were able to overcome this. Since the hypothetical non-technical recruiter in the OP isn't going to understand the technical things that you can't talk about anyways, being able to communicate how you added value is even more important. That depends on what you are working on. My first program, I could give you a pretty good description of what I did and how I contributed to the program in meaningful ways. My second program, I couldn't even say what it was when I first started. Even now I'm severely limited as the program has a very low public profile. What is actually in my resume now is pretty much the extent of what I can say.
verteu 11y ago
The article is true -- large companies often hire through non-technical recruiters, who aren't qualified to judge applicants. But I find it disingenuous to single out tech, which is one of the most meritocratic industries. What does the screening process look like in finance? Academia? Journalism? Real estate?
- WaxProlix 11y ago
  Nobody has an image of finance, academia, journalism, or real estate that is bound up in the concept of 'meritocracy', though, so publishing this sort of takedown on any of those industries (and for the less illusioned, in ours as well) would induce a lot of 'no shit, Sherlock' moments.
  - madcaptenor 11y ago
    Academia certainly likes to consider itself a meritocracy. (Like software, it's not.)
    - WaxProlix 11y ago
      Good point, that's pretty true. Much like software, there's a projected image which involves the ideal of 'meritocracy', and much like software that's not how it works on the inside. Unlike software, nobody who's been in or involved with academia for more than a year or two (read: grad students) holds on to that illusion or parrots that brand of nonsense. My suspicion about software's need to maintain a veneer of meritocratic legitimacy is that there's a lot of money being tossed around, and a lot of founders/entrepreneur types making and losing money. Those who succeed have the loudest voices, and they don't want their successes to have been be influenced by the whims of fate or chance. So we end up with this Horatio Alger mythos born of the dissonance between success and merit.
- afterburner 11y ago
  Finance seems to be based mostly on cultural fit and willingness to put in extreme hours. That may actually be easier to test for.
drblast 11y ago
I think it's time that we consider that the problem might not be that we're hiring people based on the wrong things, but that the simple indicators of future success just might not exist. How long does this have to be an unsolved problem before people start to think, hey, maybe future success just isn't predictable, and certainly not if all you have is a resume and a couple hour interview. Maybe hire people with at least some demonstrated aptitude and invest in them instead.
- cp9 11y ago
  >Maybe hire people with at least some demonstrated aptitude and invest in them instead how do you demonstrate this?
  - Swizec 11y ago
    The old mantra has been: released projects. Someone who can show their own past work, either open-source, side-project, launched projects, or work at somebody else's company ... well there is a high chance that they can at least code their way out of a wet paper bag. Probably more than that too. Another, perhaps better, approach is to just hire a few of the most promising candidates for a couple of days. Give them a small project. See if there's a fit.
    - jedmeyers 11y ago
      How will you verify the released projects if the person only worked in-house? I think that the issue is not only about predicting future success but about trust as well.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    I ask potential hires to bring samples of their work and have them discuss it in depth.
    - anthony_d 11y ago
      I work in an industry that would fire then sue me for taking samples of my actual work.
kqr2 11y ago
For reference, this post and discussion started in the thread about getting a thorough CS background online and its employability aspects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551239 In particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551911
bsdpython 11y ago
I've got a crazy idea: we should start evaluating recruiters. I once had a very experienced recruiter get upset and pushy when I told her I was a bad fit for a job and I didn't want to apply. After some back and forth I realized that the source of confusion was that she didn't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript. Weeding out incompetent recruiters would help the whole process.
- Yhippa 11y ago
  I had one recruiter call me up and try to sell me on a job in a certain technology. Then as the call ended the recruiter asked me what the technology was and what it did. If you had little credibility before it's definitely gone now. This sounds like a great business opportunity BTW. I would love to get the real deal on some of these recruiters.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
This post is a bit self serving and this statement: "The sad truth is that if you don’t look great on paper and you’re applying to a startup that has a strong brand, unless you know someone in the company, the odds of you even getting an interview are very slim." Is, in my experience as someone doing the hiring at a number of 'name brand' companies, completely false. That said, I've heard it used by recruiter after recruiter trying to play on the fears of an insecure engineer in order to get them to commit to approaching companies only through the recruiter. The motive here is that the recruiter wants to get up to 30% of your first year's salary for introducing you to a company, if you approach the company directly, well then the recruiter gets zip. I strongly believe that it is this self interest which drives this silly (and bogus) narrative that if you don't come from the "best schools" or have the "best pedigree" you won't even get looked at by the "hot" start ups or companies. That said, just mailing your resume to the 'jobs@...' address and hoping for the best is not a good strategy either. The key to getting an interview is that the hiring manager has to think you have a shot at being hired into the job, and for that to be true they have to believe that you have the skills to do the job, and would be able to work well with the existing team. The easiest way for that communication to happen is to have someone that knows you and knows the manager make that connection. The next easiest way is to participate in activities that people who do that kind of job participate in. I know people who have been located in World of Warcraft guild chat, at maker spaces, and at conferences. Here is a clue, hiring managers go to subject matter conferences to meet people who might have the skills to to fill the positions they are looking for. It is efficient, you meet a lot of people quickly, and it is "safe" (you don't have to set expectations you just start talking). Another great source of recommendations? Professors. People who have seen you working on problems, ideally in small teams, and coming up with solutions.
31reasons 11y ago
Recently I was interviewed by a well-known dating company. After the onsite interview they rejected me by saying "Our team liked you very much but they have decided to go with the candidate that they worked with in the past". Is this right ?
- yarrel 11y ago
  Yes. They chose a known quantity over an unknown one. I'd be disappointed though.
  - 31reasons 11y ago
    I am not a quantity.
graycat 11y ago
Lesson: Be on the hiring side of the table. That is, be an entrepreneur. As someone with some high value, tough to get paid that value as an employee; that's a very old lesson. E.g., I've been programming for decades and am doing so now in my startup, but my programming background doesn't meet the criteria in the job ads. So, I have little or no experience with Python, Java, JavaScript, C++, Linux, Unix, Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, C#, functional programming, etc. Instead for my platform I selected Windows instead of Linux. On Windows I selected Visual Basic .NET (VB) instead of C#. Why? Because for my work both VB and C# are essentially equivalent ways to build on the common language runtime (CLR) and .NET Framework, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, SQL Server, etc. And for my work, C# and VB differ mostly just in the flavor of syntactic sugar. I prefer the flavor of VB because: C# borrows much of the deliberately "idiosyncratic" syntax of C. Sure, way back in the DEC PDP-8 with 8 KB of main memory, some of the sparse C syntax may have seemed good to have. While there are still some good uses for C, now for my work C is like digging a Panama Canal with a teaspoon and VB and C# are far ahead. No C for me, thank you. Much the same for C++ (e.g., tough to avoid memory leaks -- tough to be really clear on just what the heck Stroustrup wrote). So, I like the more verbose, traditional (Algol, Fortran, PL/I, Pascal, etc.) syntax of VB instead of the more sparse, idiosyncratic syntax of C#. So, to me, VB is easier to write and read and, when I start to hire, teach and learn. So, it's VB. The .NET Framework? It's a major hunk of software, one of the most important in computing. Microsoft is solidly behind it, and they have several tens of billions of dollars in cash to back what they want. Microsoft has long seen their business as that of supplying a platform for others to build on, and their .NET Framework is one of their most important planks in their platform. For my work, .NET has a class for nearly everything of any general purpose utility. So, often my code becomes mostly just mortar to join .NET bricks. For more, ASP.NET has a way to write Web pages, and so far it seems mostly from okay up to fine with me. ADO.NET has a way to get to relational data base and, again, seems mostly from okay up to fine with me. For Python, maybe I will use it for some of its good packages, if doing so becomes worthwhile for my work. For Java, don't need it. If I had already used it, then I wouldn't use it now and would forget it. For JavaScript, so far for my Web pages ASP.NET has written a little JavaScript for me, but I have yet to write a single line. If I need it, then I will use it -- so far I don't need it. For Lisp, too many parentheses, and I'd have no idea how to get to the .NET Framework. For algorithms and data structures, been there, done that, learned it, used it, taught it in college and graduate school, done original work in it. For the engineering, I've got a Ph.D. in engineering from a world famous research university. Some of that background is crucial for my startup. It appears that the jobs with the job ads would make no use of that background -- a big advantage for my startup. Besides, nearly no one hiring would be able to evaluate my Ph.D. work. And nearly anyone hiring would be afraid to have a Ph.D. subordinate. So, the job ads and I agree to disagree: They don't want me, and I don't want them. If my startup works and I need to hire for software development, then I will. Main qualifications: (A) Some okay basic computer usage and familiarity and interest. (B) Good at reading and writing technical material. (C) A good record in a college STEM major. (D) Otherwise looks like potentially a good employee. Having programmed a little would be a plus. That's what I'll hire for. It's not so strange: It's how I got hired in a Watson lab AI group, and they hired for the right stuff. The job ads for software developers are sick-o. That others are making such mistakes is good for my startup.
MCRed 11y ago
Here's what I've learned from 20+ years of hiring people: 1. Make all the resumes that come in responding to technical jobs go straight to your inbox. If your company has a candidate tracking system then set up an alias that sends it to you and to the tracking system. 2. Review every resume yourself. Jump in and ask follow up questions for candidates that are interesting. 3. Interview them yourself. Every one you bring in you should spend some time with. 4. Have authority with the head of HR to make offers and move fast when you decide to hire people. If you leave this up to HR you will lose the best candidates. The simple fact of the matter is you can't outsource this to recruiters. Let HR people do their paper work and all that but do NOT allow them in the decision making loop. This article is right you can't train them to do your job, and my experience is that they are trained, basically, to be paper pushers and gate keepers. Not only do these people not know how to tell a good candidate from a bad one, they (with very few exceptions) don't even KNOW they don't know, and they think they are an important part of the process in screening people out! Look at their blog posts and linked in profiles. They're proud of this role because they think it makes them important and they think they know what they are doing. This is the worst kind of ignorance, those who think they know but don't. If I seem bitter it's because I've spent a lot of time dealing with HR people who are incompetent and who, basically, don't give a damn about the quality of hiring. So, I'd say the number one most important hire in the early years (but not the earliest years) is the head of HR.
- rustynails 11y ago
  That all rings of truth. HR overstate their abilities and interfere far too much. Over the years I've been told "if you hire, it's your risk", which turns into "I'm glad we picked Sam". Also, if you're a woman, don't make a big deal about it. Saying "I'm a woman ..." Anything will almost certainly get you shown the door - this is a red light for "attitude". There are many indicators I see, people who talk about being manages during a technical interview, etc. all bad signs. One: you'd be surprised how many women have been programmed with ad attitudes/entitlement. Makes me sad.
  - nosefrog 11y ago
    > One: you'd be surprised how many women have been programmed with ad attitudes/entitlement. I don't understand what you mean here, and this comes off as offensive.

129 points by forloop 11y ago

People are hired by merits defined by the hiring manager, not a globally consistent set of merits. It's a very well written article.

vonmoltke 11y ago
Yes, and those merits may or may not correlate with ability to do the job the candidate is being hired for.

iamthepieman 11y ago

I don't understand the author's problem with "look good on paper" This is paper that the applicant has full control over. The applicant can put whatever they want on their resume and cover letter. Sure this is a writing challenge that doesn't correlate directly with engineering ability but being able to communicate the value of your ideas and explain technical ideas and methods to people with different backgrounds and skill levels seems like something that's just as necessary as engineering ability. It's always been my mantra that if you can't explain something to someone with no background in it then you don't truly understand what you're trying to explain.

leeny 11y ago
Author here. The issue is that, much of the time, people reading the paper just look at proxies (for speed reasons and because they're disincentivized to select wild cards). You can do a fantastic job of explaining your projects, but if you don't have pedigree, the reader's eyeballs may never go far enough down the page. It's a matter of how these things are weighed, and the weight assigned to credentialing >>> the weight assigned to everything else.
- Swizec 11y ago
  > but if you don't have pedigree, the reader's eyeballs may never go far enough down the page Solution: put your pedigree at the bottom of the page. Someone looking at my CV needs to get through all my projects and past successes before they get to the bullet point that says "5 years college, no degree". Why on earth would you put your weaknesses first?
  - leeny 11y ago
    Recruiters are good at quickly scanning for pedigree before incurring the cognitive load required to grok projects. So, I don't think placement/layout matters that much. And pedigree doesn't just refer to your degree -- it's also the brand name factor of where you've worked. Not saying this is OK, for the record.
- iamthepieman 11y ago
  I don't even have a degree. I've always made it to the interview stage by putting myself on the cover letter and, to a lesser extent, in the resume. I might say what I would like to do for the company, mention some changes or improvements I would make to their products or tell them why I think they could use a geospatial engineer even if they don't use GIS in an obvious way in their publicly facing APIs/products. This is just as much a filter for me as it is for the company. One thing I've learned in my job searches is that I'm looking to filter just as much and quickly as the companies I'm applying to.
vonmoltke 11y ago
> I don't understand the author's problem with "look good on paper" This is paper that the applicant has full control over. The applicant can put whatever they want on their resume and cover letter. Yes, up to and including blatant lies. If your company establishes a reputation of screening resumes based on certain features like university you encourage less moral applicants to fluff up their resumes. While these people may not make it through the interview stages, they force the competent but humble or disadvantaged applicants out at the resume screening stage. > It's always been my mantra that if you can't explain something to someone with no background in it then you don't truly understand what you're trying to explain. True, but in some cases people aren't allowed to talk about what they have done at that level. That puts anyone from a defense contractor, HFT firm, R&D group, and similar at a significant disadvantage because they can only advertise what they are doing in the broadest terms, if at all.
- iamthepieman 11y ago
  > Yes, up to and including blatant lies I wasn't suggesting that people lie on their resume or cover letter. > That puts anyone from a defense contractor, HFT firm, R&D group, and similar at a significant disadvantage. I was a defense contractor and experienced this first hand. I found that good communication skills both verbal and written were able to overcome this. Since the hypothetical non-technical recruiter in the OP isn't going to understand the technical things that you can't talk about anyways, being able to communicate how you added value is even more important.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > I wasn't suggesting that people lie on their resume or cover letter. I know, and I did not intend to suggest that. I'm just pointing out that people do, and it distorts resume pre-screening. > I was a defense contractor and experienced this first hand. I found that good communication skills both verbal and written were able to overcome this. Since the hypothetical non-technical recruiter in the OP isn't going to understand the technical things that you can't talk about anyways, being able to communicate how you added value is even more important. That depends on what you are working on. My first program, I could give you a pretty good description of what I did and how I contributed to the program in meaningful ways. My second program, I couldn't even say what it was when I first started. Even now I'm severely limited as the program has a very low public profile. What is actually in my resume now is pretty much the extent of what I can say.

verteu 11y ago

The article is true -- large companies often hire through non-technical recruiters, who aren't qualified to judge applicants. But I find it disingenuous to single out tech, which is one of the most meritocratic industries. What does the screening process look like in finance? Academia? Journalism? Real estate?

WaxProlix 11y ago
Nobody has an image of finance, academia, journalism, or real estate that is bound up in the concept of 'meritocracy', though, so publishing this sort of takedown on any of those industries (and for the less illusioned, in ours as well) would induce a lot of 'no shit, Sherlock' moments.
- madcaptenor 11y ago
  Academia certainly likes to consider itself a meritocracy. (Like software, it's not.)
  - WaxProlix 11y ago
    Good point, that's pretty true. Much like software, there's a projected image which involves the ideal of 'meritocracy', and much like software that's not how it works on the inside. Unlike software, nobody who's been in or involved with academia for more than a year or two (read: grad students) holds on to that illusion or parrots that brand of nonsense. My suspicion about software's need to maintain a veneer of meritocratic legitimacy is that there's a lot of money being tossed around, and a lot of founders/entrepreneur types making and losing money. Those who succeed have the loudest voices, and they don't want their successes to have been be influenced by the whims of fate or chance. So we end up with this Horatio Alger mythos born of the dissonance between success and merit.
afterburner 11y ago
Finance seems to be based mostly on cultural fit and willingness to put in extreme hours. That may actually be easier to test for.

drblast 11y ago

I think it's time that we consider that the problem might not be that we're hiring people based on the wrong things, but that the simple indicators of future success just might not exist. How long does this have to be an unsolved problem before people start to think, hey, maybe future success just isn't predictable, and certainly not if all you have is a resume and a couple hour interview. Maybe hire people with at least some demonstrated aptitude and invest in them instead.

cp9 11y ago
>Maybe hire people with at least some demonstrated aptitude and invest in them instead how do you demonstrate this?
- Swizec 11y ago
  The old mantra has been: released projects. Someone who can show their own past work, either open-source, side-project, launched projects, or work at somebody else's company ... well there is a high chance that they can at least code their way out of a wet paper bag. Probably more than that too. Another, perhaps better, approach is to just hire a few of the most promising candidates for a couple of days. Give them a small project. See if there's a fit.
  - jedmeyers 11y ago
    How will you verify the released projects if the person only worked in-house? I think that the issue is not only about predicting future success but about trust as well.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  I ask potential hires to bring samples of their work and have them discuss it in depth.
  - anthony_d 11y ago
    I work in an industry that would fire then sue me for taking samples of my actual work.

kqr2 11y ago

For reference, this post and discussion started in the thread about getting a thorough CS background online and its employability aspects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551239 In particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551911

bsdpython 11y ago

I've got a crazy idea: we should start evaluating recruiters. I once had a very experienced recruiter get upset and pushy when I told her I was a bad fit for a job and I didn't want to apply. After some back and forth I realized that the source of confusion was that she didn't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript. Weeding out incompetent recruiters would help the whole process.

Yhippa 11y ago
I had one recruiter call me up and try to sell me on a job in a certain technology. Then as the call ended the recruiter asked me what the technology was and what it did. If you had little credibility before it's definitely gone now. This sounds like a great business opportunity BTW. I would love to get the real deal on some of these recruiters.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

This post is a bit self serving and this statement: "The sad truth is that if you don’t look great on paper and you’re applying to a startup that has a strong brand, unless you know someone in the company, the odds of you even getting an interview are very slim." Is, in my experience as someone doing the hiring at a number of 'name brand' companies, completely false. That said, I've heard it used by recruiter after recruiter trying to play on the fears of an insecure engineer in order to get them to commit to approaching companies only through the recruiter. The motive here is that the recruiter wants to get up to 30% of your first year's salary for introducing you to a company, if you approach the company directly, well then the recruiter gets zip. I strongly believe that it is this self interest which drives this silly (and bogus) narrative that if you don't come from the "best schools" or have the "best pedigree" you won't even get looked at by the "hot" start ups or companies. That said, just mailing your resume to the 'jobs@...' address and hoping for the best is not a good strategy either. The key to getting an interview is that the hiring manager has to think you have a shot at being hired into the job, and for that to be true they have to believe that you have the skills to do the job, and would be able to work well with the existing team. The easiest way for that communication to happen is to have someone that knows you and knows the manager make that connection. The next easiest way is to participate in activities that people who do that kind of job participate in. I know people who have been located in World of Warcraft guild chat, at maker spaces, and at conferences. Here is a clue, hiring managers go to subject matter conferences to meet people who might have the skills to to fill the positions they are looking for. It is efficient, you meet a lot of people quickly, and it is "safe" (you don't have to set expectations you just start talking). Another great source of recommendations? Professors. People who have seen you working on problems, ideally in small teams, and coming up with solutions.

31reasons 11y ago

Recently I was interviewed by a well-known dating company. After the onsite interview they rejected me by saying "Our team liked you very much but they have decided to go with the candidate that they worked with in the past". Is this right ?

yarrel 11y ago
Yes. They chose a known quantity over an unknown one. I'd be disappointed though.
- 31reasons 11y ago
  I am not a quantity.

graycat 11y ago

Lesson: Be on the hiring side of the table. That is, be an entrepreneur. As someone with some high value, tough to get paid that value as an employee; that's a very old lesson. E.g., I've been programming for decades and am doing so now in my startup, but my programming background doesn't meet the criteria in the job ads. So, I have little or no experience with Python, Java, JavaScript, C++, Linux, Unix, Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, C#, functional programming, etc. Instead for my platform I selected Windows instead of Linux. On Windows I selected Visual Basic .NET (VB) instead of C#. Why? Because for my work both VB and C# are essentially equivalent ways to build on the common language runtime (CLR) and .NET Framework, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, SQL Server, etc. And for my work, C# and VB differ mostly just in the flavor of syntactic sugar. I prefer the flavor of VB because: C# borrows much of the deliberately "idiosyncratic" syntax of C. Sure, way back in the DEC PDP-8 with 8 KB of main memory, some of the sparse C syntax may have seemed good to have. While there are still some good uses for C, now for my work C is like digging a Panama Canal with a teaspoon and VB and C# are far ahead. No C for me, thank you. Much the same for C++ (e.g., tough to avoid memory leaks -- tough to be really clear on just what the heck Stroustrup wrote). So, I like the more verbose, traditional (Algol, Fortran, PL/I, Pascal, etc.) syntax of VB instead of the more sparse, idiosyncratic syntax of C#. So, to me, VB is easier to write and read and, when I start to hire, teach and learn. So, it's VB. The .NET Framework? It's a major hunk of software, one of the most important in computing. Microsoft is solidly behind it, and they have several tens of billions of dollars in cash to back what they want. Microsoft has long seen their business as that of supplying a platform for others to build on, and their .NET Framework is one of their most important planks in their platform. For my work, .NET has a class for nearly everything of any general purpose utility. So, often my code becomes mostly just mortar to join .NET bricks. For more, ASP.NET has a way to write Web pages, and so far it seems mostly from okay up to fine with me. ADO.NET has a way to get to relational data base and, again, seems mostly from okay up to fine with me. For Python, maybe I will use it for some of its good packages, if doing so becomes worthwhile for my work. For Java, don't need it. If I had already used it, then I wouldn't use it now and would forget it. For JavaScript, so far for my Web pages ASP.NET has written a little JavaScript for me, but I have yet to write a single line. If I need it, then I will use it -- so far I don't need it. For Lisp, too many parentheses, and I'd have no idea how to get to the .NET Framework. For algorithms and data structures, been there, done that, learned it, used it, taught it in college and graduate school, done original work in it. For the engineering, I've got a Ph.D. in engineering from a world famous research university. Some of that background is crucial for my startup. It appears that the jobs with the job ads would make no use of that background -- a big advantage for my startup. Besides, nearly no one hiring would be able to evaluate my Ph.D. work. And nearly anyone hiring would be afraid to have a Ph.D. subordinate. So, the job ads and I agree to disagree: They don't want me, and I don't want them. If my startup works and I need to hire for software development, then I will. Main qualifications: (A) Some okay basic computer usage and familiarity and interest. (B) Good at reading and writing technical material. (C) A good record in a college STEM major. (D) Otherwise looks like potentially a good employee. Having programmed a little would be a plus. That's what I'll hire for. It's not so strange: It's how I got hired in a Watson lab AI group, and they hired for the right stuff. The job ads for software developers are sick-o. That others are making such mistakes is good for my startup.

MCRed 11y ago

Here's what I've learned from 20+ years of hiring people: 1. Make all the resumes that come in responding to technical jobs go straight to your inbox. If your company has a candidate tracking system then set up an alias that sends it to you and to the tracking system. 2. Review every resume yourself. Jump in and ask follow up questions for candidates that are interesting. 3. Interview them yourself. Every one you bring in you should spend some time with. 4. Have authority with the head of HR to make offers and move fast when you decide to hire people. If you leave this up to HR you will lose the best candidates. The simple fact of the matter is you can't outsource this to recruiters. Let HR people do their paper work and all that but do NOT allow them in the decision making loop. This article is right you can't train them to do your job, and my experience is that they are trained, basically, to be paper pushers and gate keepers. Not only do these people not know how to tell a good candidate from a bad one, they (with very few exceptions) don't even KNOW they don't know, and they think they are an important part of the process in screening people out! Look at their blog posts and linked in profiles. They're proud of this role because they think it makes them important and they think they know what they are doing. This is the worst kind of ignorance, those who think they know but don't. If I seem bitter it's because I've spent a lot of time dealing with HR people who are incompetent and who, basically, don't give a damn about the quality of hiring. So, I'd say the number one most important hire in the early years (but not the earliest years) is the head of HR.

rustynails 11y ago
That all rings of truth. HR overstate their abilities and interfere far too much. Over the years I've been told "if you hire, it's your risk", which turns into "I'm glad we picked Sam". Also, if you're a woman, don't make a big deal about it. Saying "I'm a woman ..." Anything will almost certainly get you shown the door - this is a red light for "attitude". There are many indicators I see, people who talk about being manages during a technical interview, etc. all bad signs. One: you'd be surprised how many women have been programmed with ad attitudes/entitlement. Makes me sad.
- nosefrog 11y ago
  > One: you'd be surprised how many women have been programmed with ad attitudes/entitlement. I don't understand what you mean here, and this comes off as offensive.